Hi - i was hoping for some seasoned advice on how and when to combine my 6 week old silkie chicks with my two older Ameraucana hens (19 weeks and 11 weeks).

i have them in side-by-side pens, separated by chain link and hardward cloth so they can see each other every day. My chicks do a lot of sparing with each other. My two older ones do a little bit of back and forth posturing, especially in the morning when i first let them out, but it isn't anything dangerous and they don't peck at each other at all. In fact it looks more like a game of tag when they do this. But if my older girl Penny took a peck at the little guys she could do some serious damage, were she so inclined.

Will i need to wait until the silkies are full grown at around 5-6 months? Is it possible they will always be so much smaller than my other two that i won't ever be able to combine them? i guess i didn't think about all this when i first got started.

I advise others to wait to be safe... but I toss my birds together at about 2 months old... they have lots of time free ranging though so everyone can escape to a different pen if they needed to. In addition, they get to know each other at about 3 weeks when I let the babies start to free range.

Thanks! My older hen is very curious about the little ones, but not sure what she would do if she could get to them. The little ones are growing by leaps and bounds every day. But still so teeny compared to her.